Garfield Show News

I don't write much here about professional-type things I'm working on but every so often, the e-mailed questions pile up to the point there I figure it will save me time to do one of these…

We've started production on Season Four of The Garfield Show, an animated series of which I am the Supervising Producer. I don't know what my title means, either. Basically, I write or story-edit scripts and I voice-direct the actors. For those of you who care about how meaningless titles can be, I did pretty much the same job on the original Garfield & Friends TV show for CBS when my credit was "Written by" and later when with no noticeable change in my duties or responsibilities, it went to "Written and Co-Produced by."

We did 121 half-hours of that show. In the first three seasons of this one, we did 26 half-hours per season so that's 78 of these thus far. For Season Four, we're doing at least 27 so it all adds up to…well, a heckuva lot of lasagna jokes.

Season Three of The Garfield Show contains three extra-length specials. (In case anyone cares, a usual Garfield Show consists of two cartoons of 11-12 minutes each. The specials run across two half-hours and each is about 45 minutes long.) In Season Four, there will be seven of these specials.

Seasons One and Two have aired in the U.S. on Cartoon Network, which ran every episode at least as many times as their contract allowed. Season Three is already running in many other countries, some of which air it in prime-time, and it will air in America, plus I'm sure Seasons One and Two will air some more here. When? Your guess is as good as mine. One of these days. I'll let you know if I hear anything but you may know before I do.